[QCrit] Adult Fantasy - THE CONQUEROR'S DAUGHTER (89k, Attempt #1)

Hi Pubtips, after lurking around here for a while, I've learned that I haven't been very good at querying in the past, and so, would appreciate any feedback. There are a lot of things I'm not very confident about. Thanks in advance.

I've included the first 300 just to make sure I'm not doing any horrendous.

Query:

Dear [agent],

Ceci’s mother is a queen who conquered five kingdoms. In comparison, Ceci is the spare with no magical talent, no suitors, no inheritance, not even her mother’s love. Most days, Ceci is happy to play the part of idle princess, looking after the young ladies of court, attending balls, and drinking wine. However, when the tree, which gives power to kings, executes her mother as punishment for her violent conquests, Ceci learns her mother’s final act is to exile Ceci to a strict military order who believes the best way to mold a recruit is by first breaking them.

Desperate to return home, Ceci makes a deal with the tree. If she can take the tyrant king, Farront the Bold, prisoner, the tree will return her family’s title. However, Farront the Bold lays entrenched within his northern kingdom. After a lifetime of failure, none will follow Ceci, save her mother’s executioner, a back-stabbing ex-friend, a knight turned unwilling spy, and Farront’s cousin seeking revenge against the man who murdered his father.

Ceci has failed everything she has ever begun. When she learns her mother kept her magic weak as not to threaten her sibling’s places in the line of succession, she realizes that is by design. With one last chance, she must prove to the world and herself she is her mother’s daughter or consign herself to a lifetime of other people’s control.

THE CONQUEROR’S DAUGHTER is an adult fantasy at 89,000 words where the nostalgic heroines of Tamora Pierce meets the Arthuriana-style quest of A24’s The Green Knight. It will appeal to readers of the troubled mother-daughter relationships of T. Kingfisher’s A Sorceress Comes to Call with the unlikely protagonist of Antonia Hodgson’s The Raven Scholar.

[Bio]

Thanks for your consideration,

First 300:

The Great Conqueror was a legend, but a legend made for a poor mother. At the edge of the dueling yard, Ceci watched her mother lunge with a feral shout and knock her partner flat. The courtiers assembled beneath the pavilion erupted in applause. No one had seen her. She could retreat to the palace. Rena would never know.

Her mother pulled off her helmet and offered her partner a hand. Ceci had never received that smile. She had never been good enough. A lifetime of never enough, the nightmare of failing her oldest friend, of proving she was what everyone said, the Great Conqueror’s most inept child, made her grip tighten on her helmet. Today, she could protect a single person. It was no victory on the battlefield, it might never earn her mother’s approval, but it would be her victory nonetheless.

“Mother, I would like a word!” Ceci walked to the rack of wooden practice swords and feigned interest in testing their weights. “I have come across a rumor that concerns me greatly.”

The Great Conqueror, Bellarosaria Isidellanos, sighed. Just a sigh, but Ceci’s rabbit heart quivered. She tightened a hand around the hilt of a sword, which was as good as anything to give one courage. What if she made the situation worse? But what could be worse than doing nothing? She might be many things: flighty, more prone to courting balls than responsibility, a connoisseur of wines over swords, but disloyal? She would rather endure this humiliation before all these courtiers than fail a friend.